When we moved into our house, every room needed to be either gutted or decorated…a great project.  We spent a long time planning and saving to change the house.  From updating previous houses and using lots of different ideas from restaurants, cafes and bars…my plans for a room seem to follow a formula of somethings old, somethings new, somethings utilitarian and somethings classic i.e….mixing vintage, used & reclaimed with modern or design classics.

So this part of my blog is really to advocate design classics, charity shops and eBay as great starts for creating homely homes for not lots of money!

The Kitchen

My inspiration for the kitchen definitely came from magazines, trawling charity shops, researching sixties and seventies design and spending times with my sons in cafes…I especially love the Primrose Bakery!  My scrapbook has a collection of cuttings…

My favourite features of our kitchen…

White metro tiles

My favourite and actually only tile choice!  I love them because they are classic; vintage,simple and timeless.  They are also reasonably priced – win/win!  I also like grey grout but stuck to white in the kitchen.

Parquet Flooring

Being a 60s house, our home doesn’t have many attractive features so we wanted to add some ‘original’ features and saved up for parquet flooring to add character and warmth.  We spend nearly all our time in the kitchen area, so wanted a warm material instead of tiling which would have required underfloor heating – something that would have been too expensive.  We did consider reclaimed parquet which would have added more character.

Stainless Steel appliances (something utilitarian)

Vintage Crockery (something old)

To add colour, character and to soften the white, wood and stainless steel. I bought all the crockery from charity shops or eBay.  I am always very excited when I see a piece of 1970s crockery on the shelves of a charity shop…a piece of treasure!  One of my favourite pastimes is wandering around the charity shops looking for retro crockery and fabric (which I now share with my sons; who are always keen to have a look through the second-hand toys!)

 

The Window sill…

I was pleased to find the ‘Dripping’ pot in a charity shop 🙂

Freestanding 1950s style Larder

This took a lot of persuading!  Especially as the first one we bought was falling apart due to woodworm!  I did some research and found a company called Capelcrafts on eBay who make the larders from scratch; so I could choose the style, size and colour to fit our kitchen.

 

Design Classics

Bush Radio: love dancing round the kitchen when cleaning and cooking!

Dualit toaster: brings back memories of our Uni halls toaster…

Smeg Fridge Freezer and Newgate Electric Clock: Most rooms have one, if not more clocks…I love their different designs and Newgate produce some great ‘reproduction’ vintage-style clocks.

The reclaimed church chairs: The church chairs we had always loved in Pubs and bars and we bought these via eBay.  I love them mixed with the  Eames style chairs…couldn’t afford the real ones…maybe one day!

Matryoshka: Russian Dolls

I have collected Russian dolls for a long time and I sometimes find them in charity shops (which is very exciting) or markets, or my husband has brought some back when he has travelled to Russia.  I love the colours and designs and they appear to pop up in most rooms in our house…

Fairy lights

…we seem to have quite a lot of these in the house but I really don’t think you can have too many…they are great to brighten miserable winter evenings and have a magical feel on summer nights.